


Ohana means family

by orphan_account



Series: Soulmates [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Emotional Abuse, Family Feels, Incest, M/M, Marks are the first words said to one another, Nori didn't ask for any of this shit, Nori is a puppy that keeps getting kicked in the head, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, metaphorically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1652873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nori had everything to be happy. He was learning to be a magician, he had a loving mother, a caring big brother, and very soon he had the most beautiful of little brothers.<br/>But it all went wrong one day when his family left without traces, and Nori never knew what he had done to be abandoned that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ohana means family

“Brother”

That was the only word on Nori's arm.

First words from a dwarf's One could be strange at times (he had a distant cousin, Gloin, whose arm bore a string of insults. It was the greatest thing _ever_ ) and unpredictable (he had a friend who had the words “nice to meet you sir” and as it had turned out, his soulmate had told him this right before punching him in the face because he was flirting with his girlfriend). Having the word “brother” was weird, but weirder things had been known to happen, and Nori wasn't worried about that.

He had bigger things to worry about.

Like convincing Drein the Magnificent to take him as his apprentice.

Drein was a magician, who did a little show all around the mountains. His eldest brother lived in the same village as Nori's family, and every time Drein came home, Nori rushed to him to show how good he was at tricks and to beg for an apprenticeship. Drein had always refused up until now, saying Nori was too young for it.

But that had been before. This time Nori was thirty five, which in his opinion was plenty old enough, and he'd invented a brand new trick with a fresh egg and mice. Drein was impressed. He'd mostly figured out how it was done of course, but he was still impressed, if only because _Nori_ had figured out how to do it, and on his own.

“I'll talk to your mam,” Drein promised. “I ain't so young anymore, maybe it's time I start passing down the secrets.”

Ari, of course, didn't agree easily. A magician's life wasn't what anyone dreamt of for their kids, Nori had learned that, but it still was his calling. There was nothing more beautiful in the world than making these things disappear while no one could tell how you'd done it. It was better than real magic, in his mind. Wizards could do things with the song of the universe helping them, and they just had to wave their hand and anything could happen and it was easy, like cheating. But being a magician meant you had to be more clever than everyone around and more clever than the universe and you made the impossible possible even with only a smart brain and clever fingers.

That was what he tried to tell his mother when Drein came to see her. Words were not usually Nori's strongest point, but he forced them out of his throat anyway. The mere fact that he was talking so much impressed Ari.

She agreed in the end, if only because she knew better than to try to prevent Nori from doing something he truly wanted. He would have run away and never come back if she'd taken the love of his life away, and they both knew it.

“You'll be good, right?” she told him on the day he was to leave for the first time. “Master Drein is very kind to teach you. Listen to him and obey and accept that he knows more than you do, and be good. Will you be good?”

Nori nodded firmly, and hugged her tight. He was happy to leave, because he had wanted to for so long, but he was still sad to leave behind his mother and brother.

“Write to us sometimes,” Dori asked him. “I know you don't like writing but... even an empty letter, or just a piece of paper with your name, so we know you're fine, and you can ask your master to write the address, right? I want to know you're okay.”

“Gonna miss you, Dori.”

“Gonna miss you too, Nori. Come back to us in one piece.”

 

The first few years weren't so easy. Nori had always thought he was good at stage magic, but master Drein was something else. There was a perfection in his every gesture that was mesmerizing, nothing was superfluous, and it left Nori breathless... and frustrated when he tried it himself. Luckily he had a type of mind that did have problems with repeating a gesture hundred, thousands of times until it was right, and that helped.

But then, when Nori started getting the gestures right, Drein would remind him that he also needed to apply a healthy dose of misdirection to all of it, and that was more difficult. It meant focusing on two things at once and Nori wasn't so good at it. He was, however, very determined. He spent hours and hours trying to get everything right, until his hands ached and his whole face was painful due to smiling too much. He would get this right. He had to get this right. If he wasn't a magician then he was nothing, and he couldn't bear that thought.

Master Drein was, thankfully, a good master. He saw and praised Nori's efforts, and tried as early as possible to make him participate in his show. Nori was thrilled when he realized that his entire person, the mere fact that he was there, was another form of misdirection. It even allowed Drein to try new tricks, more complex ones, and Nori was eternally glad that he could help with that.

Not that it was always easy of course. Sometimes the audience wasn't good and didn't react to their show. Sometimes it rained while they were on the road, or the sun was too hot. Once they met robbers and half the money they had earned that spring was lost. And Nori would get tired sometimes, if they were in places too noisy or smelly and with too many bright lights. Sometimes it made him so tired he was sick. Having something to focus on helped usually, so he practiced easy coin tricks that felt as familiar as breathing, until he could forget the noise and the smells, but sometimes he couldn't do that and it had repercussions on his mood. Still, on the whole he was happy, and nothing else mattered.

 

Nori and Drein came home three or four times a year, rarely more. Nori was always happy when it happened. He loved magic more than anything, but he missed his family.

It was a great surprise to him when he came home once, and discovered that said family had become bigger in his absence.

“His name is Ori,” their mother told him, showing Nori to the cradle where the baby slept. “He's your little brother.”

Nori observed the infant in stunned silence, admiring the little one. Babies were ugly, and this one was no exception, but it was a wonderful sort of ugliness, one that was almost beautiful. He was honey pale all over except for a dark scribble on one arm that would become his soulmate mark in a couple months, and he had bright brown eyes that looked everywhere as if he were trying to make sense of the world, and Nori loved him for it.

“Do you want to hold him?” Ari asked, and he second son nodded so hard he feared his head might detach itself.

Nori held the baby with all the careful affection a forty five years old was capable of, which in his case was a lot of carefulness indeed. Ori was lighter and heavier than he had excepted, and his brown eyes were even nicer when he was close like this.

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” he told his little brother with the most absolute sincerity.

Ari smiled at that, as did Dori. Nori never talked much unless it was about magic. In the following weeks she repeated to all her friends, all her neighbours those adoring first words of her almost mute second son to her youngest child, and they all agreed it was the sweetest thing they had ever heard.

When after a month Drein decided it was time to go again, Nori almost begged to stay a little longer, to be with his brother. It surprised his master, would had never seen him sound so passionate about anything but magic, but Drein still refused to delay their departure.

“They'll be expecting us in the south, and if we don't come they'll hire someone else, and we'll have lost our earning. Your brother will still be there when we come back, and he'll be older too... you'll have more fun with him then.”

“But...”

“I am leaving, child, with or without you. And if you decide to stay, I won't take you with me again.”

And that decided it. Nori wanted to stay with his baby brother, but he _needed_ magic.

So he left, trying to comfort himself with the thought that it was only for four or five months.

 

When they came back, Nori's family was gone.

“They sold the house and left two weeks ago,” a neighbour told him. “They seemed in a bit of a hurry. I think they said they were going East, to Redwater. But you should ask Pern on the other side, surely they must have left her a message for you.”

They hadn't.

Nori asked all their neighbours, and no one knew why his family had gone away so suddenly.

They had not even really gone to Redwater. Drein went there with Nori, and no one had seen Ari and her sons.

They had just abandoned him, and he did not understand why. He'd been good, he'd been learning a job, he'd been sending letters home, like they asked. He had done everything to be good. But they had abandoned him and he didn't _understand_ why.

 

Feeling desperate and helpless and confused, Nori did the only thing he could and threw himself into the learning of magic with a raging passion that sometimes seemed to scared Drein. But it was the only way to stop wondering what he'd done wrong. Magic was all that he had.

Until one day, he didn't even have that anymore.

Drein was old but not ancient, and he was in good health. He expected to live many more years, and so did Nori.

But one morning, Nori found his master dead in the bed they shared in an inn. Heart attack, someone told him afterwards. Nothing could have been done.

And suddenly, Nori was on his own.

 

The first few weeks were hard, but Nori managed. He knew enough magic to try and make his own show, and he had the money they had earned until that point. It wasn't much but it was enough at first. It would have been enough, if only people had let him work. But innkeepers who'd know Drein refused to let him make his show in their inns because he was too young and would just annoy the customers, they said. He tried to work in the street, in a small town, until a guard threatened to break his accessories and arrested, claiming he was disturbing the peace.

Little by little his money went. When the money was gone, Nori was forced to sell his spare clothes, the cards he used for tricks, the birds, his handkerchiefs, everything he had. Six months after Drein's death, all Nori had were the clothes he was wearing, a desperate hunger, and nimble hands.

It was the last two that decided his fate.

He hadn't eaten in days when it occurred to him his hands could make disappear _anything_ from _anywhere_. He had sometimes stolen a few things in Drein's audience, small objects that the magician would then produce on stage, to everyone's amazement.

The only difference, he told himself as he stole his first purse, was that this time, things would not reappear. It was wrong, and he knew it. But then again, the world was wrong too, for leaving him alone and with no other resources.

And after a few years, he almost forgot that it was wrong, because it was the only thing he knew.

 

Nori was a little past fifty when he stole Dori's purse. He already had it in hand by the time he recognized his brother, and he knew that Dori, who was good and honest and not a thief, would not forgive him for this, no matter how hungry Nori was. He'd just arrived in town, and he'd eaten the last of his travel supplied two days before he got there. Dori would not understand that sort of despair.

But he would appreciate kindness, and Nori was used to lying.

He tapped on Dori's shoulder, and smiled.

“Excuse me, I think you lost this... Oh! Dori, is that you?”

“ _Nori_?”

Nori nodded, carefully crafting his smile into one of delighted surprise. When his brother pulled him into a hug, the surprise became real.

“What happened to you?” Dori exclaimed, glancing critically at his clothes. “You look like a beggar! Is this how Drein is taking care of you these days?”

“He died seven years ago. Maybe eight. He died.”

Nori didn't say that Drein had died soon after they had abandoned him, but the horror on Dori's face made it clear enough he'd done the math.

“Nori, I'm so sorry, this is... we didn't know... he seemed so strong and healthy, who could have imagined that he'd...”

“Can I come home?”

It was a logical request. Nori had left home to follow his master. He would have gone back after Drein's death if he'd known where home was. He did now. It was time to come home.

Or maybe not. Because Dori's expression went from pity to uncertainty.

“It might not be a good idea,” he said. “Our house here is so small... I don't think we'll have room for you... it's not that we don't want to, but I'm not sure we can...”

Nori would have slept in the kitchen. He would have slept at the feet of his brother's bed. Both would have been more comfortable and safer than some of the places he'd slept in these last few years. He would convince them. He would convince their mother, if he could just see her. He always was good at convincing her when it was important.

“Can I at least come say hello to mama?” he asked. “I missed her.”

“I suppose...” Dori hesitated. “I suppose you could come home with me for lunch... but just that, Nori. That's all we can do for you. We'll try to give you some money to help you, but we can't keep you with us, I'm sorry.”

Nori nodded silently. Food was food, and knowing them it would probably be better than anything he'd had in a long time. And he'd convince them. His mother wouldn't leave him in the street once she'd see him. He knew that. He loved her and she loved him, she wouldn't let him live like that ever again.

 

Ari was _not_ happy to see him.

Nori had been sure that as soon as she'd see him, everything would be back to normal and he'd be loved and happy once more and never have to fear anything, but Ari _wasn't_ happy to see him. She glared at him when Dori introduced him, glaring as if she hated him, and he didn't understand why. Then after the coldest hug in all of Nori's life, she dragged Dori into another room, and started shouting at him.

And Nori did not understand, because it wasn't supposed to be like that. His family was supposed to love him. They had always loved him, and he didn't know what he had done to change that. It couldn't be because he was a thief. They had left long before that.

Movement caught his eye then. There was a small dwarfling with big brown eyes looking at him from the other side of the room. The child had an air of calm curiosity that Nori immediately recognized as Ori's, and so he smiled at him. His brother flinched and stared at him with fear.

So he too hated him.

Nori was starting to see a trend there, and he wasn't sure food was worth that hatred.

“You can stay for lunch,” Ari announced coldly when she was done shouting at Dori. “But that is all. Lunch and then you leave. I'll give you some money, and then you're going to leave us alone and never again come near us. Is that clear?”

He nodded. He'd rather have had their love and no money, but he'd learnt long ago that free money was never to be turned away.

“Who's that?” a small voice asked suddenly. “Why are you angry, mama?”

Ari turned toward Ori, looking terrified, and strode toward him to take him in her arms.

“That is your brother Nori. Don't worry about him. He's not going to stay long so don't be afraid.”

The idea that Ori could be afraid hurt. Nori loved his little brother. Ori was wonderful and sweet and precious. He had been as a baby, and Nori was certain that he still was. He would never have done anything that might harm Ori.

Lunch was a painful, awkward affair. Nori, who had never been too good at starting conversations, was waiting for them to ask him where he has been all these years. They did not. Ari glared at him the entire time, Dori guiltily avoided to look at him, while Ori stared at him as if he were a strange and mysterious thing, not daring to say a word. Out of the three, Nori preferred Ori's reaction.

It was almost a relief when they were done eating, and Ari left to get money for him. Ori seemed a little confused about it at first, but when he realized that his brother was already leaving, he gasped and threw himself in Nori's arms.

“Brother!” he shouted, holding Nori as tight as his little arms could, pressing his small head against Nori's chest. “You come again, right?”

Nori would have promised anything then, delighted in knowing that he was still loved, that the baby he had so adored, years ago, still cared for him. But before he could say a word Ari was snatching Ori away from him, shouting at Nori, ordering Dori to kick him out this very instant, and Nori still didn't understand why.

“It's better if you never come back,” Dori whispered to him, slipping his purse in Nori's hand as he pushed him out of the house. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... but it's better for everyone.”

 

For a month, Nori stayed away from their house.

And then one day, when Ari wasn't home, he came to say hello. He said he needed money, which wasn't a lie because he always needed money, but he could have managed on his own. What he really needed was to see his brothers.

“You shouldn't come here,” Dori said, but he still let him in. “Mama will be furious if she knows. Don't come here again, please. If you need money, I can make arrangements, we could meet somewhere else... I don't mind helping you. You're my brother and I still love you.”

“Why?” Nori asked, and the rest of the question wouldn't come out in words.

Why did they leave, all these years ago. Why did Ari hate him. Why did Dori sound as if he were doing him a favour by still loving him.

Why everything.

“Because it's not your fault,” Dori replied. “Because I don't think you mean to hurt anyone, but mother... she doesn't see that. She's just afraid and trying to protect her family.”

A family that no longer included Nori, then. But maybe she had only guessed what sort of a dwarf he'd eventually become. No one wanted a son who was a thief.

“Ori will be glad to see you though,” Dori said, sounding unsure and tired. “He asked about you a lot. He's in his room, I'll go tell him you're here.”

Right at that moment, Nori did not realize the hesitation in his brother tone. He would not hear it before many other such visits.

Right at that moment all that mattered was Ori, the only person whom Nori was certain of being loved by.

 

It went on life that for a few years. Every few weeks, Nori would go home while Ari wasn't there. Dori was never exactly happy to see him, but neither was he angry. If anything, he seemed sad. But Nori did not care, because Ori was happy to see him, and he was happy to see Ori. They played and laughed together for an hours or two. Nori felt like a great magician once more, enchanting his baby brother with clever tricks. Life wasn't good, but it was no longer bad either.

Until he was arrested one day, and spent three years in prison.

The guards asked him if he had family to warn. He claimed he did not. He couldn't drag them in this. Beside, Ari would be furious he dared to call them family.

 

Prison was not a nice place.

Nori was a thief because he'd had no choice, at least at first. It had been a long time since he'd even tried to get a more honest job, having accepted the fact that he always failed, and stealing was easy. Most people he met during these three years had started like him. Stealing to eat at first, until it became the only thing they knew. Some remained thieves, but others moved on to become con artists, or burglars, or assassins.

When they learned what Nori could do with his hands, a few offered him a job, but he always refused. He did not want to become someone Ori could be ashamed of knowing, someone that Dori shouldn't let anywhere near their brothers.

When he'd get out of there, he would become honest, for Ori.

 

Dori and Ori both cried when he came to see them after his liberation.

“Where had you gone?” Dori asked. “We thought you were dead!”

“I suddenly found a job,” Nori lied. “Was far away. Couldn't write, because mama...”

He didn't finish his sentence. He didn't have to. Dori understood, as did Ori.

 

Nori started taking odd jobs. Honest ones, always. Or as close to honest as he could get. He didn't want to be someone his brothers could be ashamed of. He was a cheap guard for low class merchants travelling in the Blue Mountains. Along the way he helped everyone, and learned a few skills, such as cooking, or hunting. He wasn't great at them, but he was good enough, and after a few years he got a reputation as someone who could do the job of three dwarves in a caravan, and in almost absolute silence. He didn't earn a lot, but he earned more than he did when he was a thief, more than he would have if he'd persisted in being a magician.

Sometimes, he still tried to sell his show in inns or at a fair, but it never worked. He was good at the technical side of it, and Drein had always praised him for it, but he never managed to truly work with his audience. He was a magician who made himself invisible without even trying.

So instead he was a guard, a cook, a hunter, anything people needed him to be. He went away for months, all of his life packed in a single bag, praying that his family would not have disappeared by the time he was back. Once he left for four years, on a caravan to the Orocarni.

Ori cried when he came back, certain that he'd died this time.

“You should have written,” Ori sobbed. “I was so worried!”

“I would have, but mama...”

It was usually enough of an explanation. It had always been enough. But Ori was forty now, and he was a clever kid. Too clever to still accept empty answers.

“Why is mama so angry at you anyway?” he asked. “She won't say, and Dori won't say, and I just don't know, and it's not fair. I want to know. I love you, I want to know why you can't be here always!”

“I don't know,” was Nori's honest answer. “I don't know. I don't know. One day she loved me, and I left with my master, and when I came back you were gone. I don't know. I don't know.”

“You didn't ask her?”

Nori shook his head. She'd never given him a chance to ask, had she? Beside, he half suspected that it had something to do with Ori, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know. There was a fear creeping at the back of his mind, a terror that he knew exactly why Ari didn't want him around anymore, and that he didn't _want_ to know.

“Forget about it,” Ori said with a quick peck to his cheek. “Just don't be gone again so long. You're my very favourite person in the world. I like it better when you're around. It makes me happy.”

“Makes me happy too,” Nori confessed, hugging him and kissing his temple.

Happiness was easy.

Happiness was Ori.

 

“You can't come anymore,” Dori told him one day as he was about to leave. “It's getting too risky. Mother is suspecting something. You've got to stop coming.”

It was a shock but not a surprise. Nori had always known this day would come, and he'd always told himself that he could accept it when it came. Dori had already been so kind, risking their mother's wrath... and Nori should have accepted that it was over, but the idea of being parted from Ori was unbearable.

“I could rent a room,” he started. “Ori's old enough, he could come see me and...”

“Ori isn't old enough for _anything_ ,” Dori cut him, and Nori felt that they weren't quite talking about the same thing, but he dared not ask. “He'll be legally adult in twenty years, Nori. Then we'll see about... about things. Then mother won't have any right to tell him who he may or may not talk to. Twenty years, Nori. For your own good, and for his. To let him grow and...” there Dori's voice broke, and he hesitated. “To let him see what he truly wants, before it is too late.”

“But I love him,” Nori said, and it was the truest thing in the world. He loved Ori. Not in the way he loved Dori, or had loved their mother... these were a quieter sort of love. But Ori was the most important being in his world, Ori was like a sun around which Nori rotated. He had become honest so that Ori would not be ashamed of him, so that prison might never separate them again. Ori was the reason he wouldn't give up on magic, because there was at least one person in the universe who was amazed by his tricks. Ori was his smiles when he was sad, his laughs when he was happy.

Dori tensed and paled, his lips pinched tight, but he did not say anything.

“He'll worry if I don't come,” Nori insisted.

“I'll explain to him. He'll understand. He'll be furious at first, but he's a clever lad and he'll understand that it's for his own good, that he's too young for now.”

Too young for what exactly, Nori almost asked. He wasn't sure he wanted an answer though. There was still that feeling in a dark corner of his brain. The feeling that asking too many questions would unleash a wasps' nest that would destroy him.

“It's better for everyone,” Dori told him, patting him on the shoulder. “For you too. You should... you should live your own life, Nori. Get a lover. Build a family of your own. Move on.”

 

Move on, Dori had said, as if it were that easy.

Move on, as if his family wasn't everything he had, knowing that his true trade, his calling, was something out of his reach.

He didn't want lovers. He didn't want a family. He wanted Ori to smile at him.

But he couldn't have that, not anymore, not ever again. Twenty years, Dori had said, until Ori was of age... but that terrifying voice deep inside Nori's mind was clear: being near Ori when he would be of age would be even worse and more dangerous for the boy than it was now, because everything would be different.

So Nori did as he had been told, and he moved on.

 

It was terrible, living every day and knowing that he would never again tell Ori about his travels and the people he'd met, the adventures he'd had. It was surviving more than living. He'd thought nothing would ever be worse than the years after Drein's death, but this was just as bad in a different way. He wasn't alone anymore, but he was still lonely. He wasn't starving every other day, but he often forgot to eat if no one reminded him. He wasn't constantly fearing for his life, but the only reason he still got up after sleep was the force of habit.

“You look like my brother when his girlfriend broke up with him,” Bombur told him one night, pushing a bowl of stew in his hands. “She'd found her One. He was devastated.”

Bombur was the cook for the caravan that had hired Nori. It wasn't the first time they were working together, and it probably wouldn't be the last. He was probably the closest thing to a friend that Nori had, even though they didn't talk much. The nice thing about Bombur was that he understood a lot of things even without words. The other nice thing about Bombur was that he also knew when people needed a conversation, and that he was willing of doing most of the talking if need be.

“So, is it a break up then?” he asked. “Six months ago you were smiling all the time, and now you look like getting killed by a boar would be a mercy. So. Break up?”

“Sort of,” Nori replied, and Bombur patted him on the shoulder.

“It's always a hard time. But time helps. And then, one day you meet your One. And everything is right again. I remember when I met my wife. Least romantic meeting in the world. That's what happens when you are born with the words 'hey, there's a maggot in my stew' written on your arm.”

That got him a smirk from Nori, though a short lived one. He wasn't sure meeting his One would change anything. He didn't want a soulmate. He wanted to see Ori's smile.

“What does yours say?” Bombur asked. “Your mark?”

Nori hesitated. Showing his mark felt personal. He vaguely knew that only family, very close friends, and one's soulmate usually got to see it. He didn't know if Bombur was a close friend. He was certainly close to being a friend, and maybe that was close enough. So Nori's pulled back his sleeve, and removed the dirty rag he used to hide his mark. Bombur nodded sombrely.

“Not an easy one to have,” he said. “Since you don't have a family, your One might be one of those too friendly types who call everyone brother?”

“I have a family,” Nori protested, forgetting for a moment that they weren't family anymore. “A mother, and two brothers.”

“You never said! I thought you were an orphan! But then...” Bombur hesitated for a moment, concern written all over his round face. “Is there any chance it could be one of them?”

Nori shrugged and looked away.

He knew Dori couldn't be it, that was certain. He'd seen Dori's mark. He didn't remember the exact words, but it had been too long and flowery to have been uttered by a baby... and his first words to Dori had been said at a time he couldn't remember anymore.

Ori though...

He'd been too young to talk the very first time Nori had seen him. And had he even talked to Nori when he had finally found them again? He could remember Ari's coldness, Dori's worried reserve, but Ori... he'd been scared, hadn't he? He hadn't said a word to Nori the entire meal, had barely looked at him. Ori hadn't talked to him, not until he was about to leave, and the kid had run to his arms, shouting...

“Can't be that,” Nori grunted softly. “Can't be that. Can't be that.”

Bombur nodded, and patted his shoulder again.

“Just because someone has said the words to you doesn't mean they're your One,” Nori insisted. “There are mistakes. There are false alerts. There are. There are.”

“Of course there are,” Bombur comforted him. “It has to go both way. Your brother doesn't have your first words to him, does he?”

It felt like a lie when Nori shook his head. He didn't know. He didn't want to know. Ori had been too young to have a readable mark the first time he'd seen him. And after that, he'd never asked, Ori had never offered. He didn't know. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to think how his family and his neighbours had all known what his first words to Ori had been. He didn't want to remember that they had left the village right around the time Ori's mark had become visible.

He didn't know.

He didn't want to know.

And something of it must have shown on his face, because Bombur dropped the subject, and insisted he ate his share of stew. Nori obeyed, but eating mud would have felt the same.

He didn't know if Ori bore his first words to him.

He didn't want to know.

But now that the doubt had been planted in his brain, there really was no way he could see Ori again. After all, what sort of a sick monster could even _consider_ the idea of having their brother as their soulmate?

 

Nori never went back to his family's house. He had promised himself, and he would keep that promise. For Ori's sake.

But he couldn't just stay away entirely. It would have taken a stronger dwarf than him. So he sneaked around, watching Ori go to his master's house to learn how to be a scribe, catching glimpses of him at the market where he often went with their mother, hiding in taverns where he knew his brother often went with friends. Ori never saw him, of course. Nori had always been good at not being noticed, and now it was a blessing. It meant he could see Ori smile in safety.

Ori who was growing into quite the handsome dwarf, and it horrified Nori that he had noticed it. Good dwarves didn't think that their brothers were pretty. Good dwarves didn't think so much about their brothers' smiles. Good dwarves didn't wonder, late at night when they were exhausted and drunk, about how it would be so easy to be happy if their brothers were their soulmates.

But Nori wasn't a good dwarf.

If he had been, he'd have left the Blue Mountain and let Ori live in peace.

He wasn't a good dwarf.

And he didn't know if he was in love with his own brother, but even if he were, Ori would never _know_ either.

Because if Nori was a bad dwarf then Ori was a good one, and he deserved better than this.

 

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty years passed like this. Nori did not once talk to Ori. One time, Dori saw him at the market and started coming toward him, but Nori easily disappeared.

Whenever he felt too lonely, too close to going to see Ori, he went to see Bombur. They really were friends now, and Nori had even learn to like Bombur's brother and cousin, as well as his wife and their two children. Bifur said he was part of the family, and it had taken Nori a while to understand that it was meant as a good thing. That not all family would leave a children behind, that not all families had a monster who was too obsessed with his own brother.

Being part of the family just meant that they liked him, and knew he liked them back. It meant also that they were ready to help him, and felt certain he'd do the same for him.

It had been decades since Nori had associated these feelings with the idea of _family_.

He had missed it.

 

When Nori was arrested for poaching on the lands of a powerful mine owner, and the guards asked if he had any family that should be warned, Nori told them about Bombur.

He didn't expect the cook to come and see him. He knew Bombur wasn't rich, and couldn't really help, but he didn't want him to worry.

 

Bombur came.

 

Bombur came and he wasn't alone.

 

Bombur came, and Ori was with him.

 

“It's a funny story,” Bombur said, but Nori barely heard him.

Ori was there, in his cell, looking sad and angry and handsome and Nori would have given anything to see him smile, but he had a feeling it wouldn't happen. He barely heard Bombur's story of getting lost on his way to the prison because he didn't know that neighbourhood, and how he'd met that little guy who had offered to take him there. Nori didn't hear that they had chatted on the way, and had realized that Bombur's friend was none other than Ori's lost brother. He didn't hear because he didn't listen, and he didn't listen because Ori shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Nori had tried so hard to be _decent_ , since he couldn't be _good_ , and yet the universe was pushing him toward Ori.

“What a surprise, eh?” Bombur said. “And now, I'll let the two of you chat. I'm sure you must have a lot to talk about, after twenty years.”

For a split second, Nori wondered how much Bombur knew. They had never again talked about his mark. But Bombur was smarter than people thought.

Nori wished he could have stayed. It was always easier to pretend he was not a monster when Bombur was around.

He did not want to be alone with Ori. He did not like the anger in his brother's eyes.

“Why didn't you come back,” Ori asked between clenched teeth. “I was _waiting_ for you.”

“Dori said to stop coming,” Nori managed to answer, forcing the words out of his throat.

“Trolls' stones and orc spit! He said you had to wait until I was old enough! I know that, I asked him and he swore, and Dori never lies when he swears! He said you'd come again when I'd be of age, and that was three years ago, and I waited for you all that time and you didn't _come_!”

Nori stared at his brother, unsure what to say. It had been so long, and he'd managed to convince himself that Dori had forbidden him to ever see Ori again, period. He had convinced himself that it was best for everyone. He had convinced himself of many things, and he didn't feel capable of seeing the world differently just yet.

“I didn't want to hurt you, Ori,” he tried to explain.

“Then you _should_ have come. I missed you. I thought you didn't love me anymore.”

“I'll always love you,” Nori replied before he could stop himself.

Ori tilted his head to the side and frowned, looking at Nori the way one would look at a complicated puzzle. There was something comforting in that look. Familiar. It wasn't the first time Ori was looking at him like that. He'd started doing it a lot toward the end, and it'd made Nori felt... important, somehow.

He didn't know what to think when, after a quick look toward the empty corridor, Ori came to sit next to him.

He knew even less what to think when he felt Ori's lips against his.

Panic felt a rather appropriate thing to feel, however.

“I know what I feel,” Ori quickly told him, grabbing his hands and holding them tight. “You're not going to... to hurt me or force me or anything. I've thought a long, long time about it, and I know that I love you.”

“No you don't.”

Ori laughed then, and it made Nori want to kiss him again. It had been so long since he'd heard Ori's laugh. He'd missed it more than words could ever say.

“You know, it's funny in a way,” Ori claimed. “I think if mama and Dori hadn't been so worried about something weird happening... I think, if you'd lived home with us, I wouldn't have fallen in love with you, no more than I fell in love with Dori. But you were never there, and when you did come, you looked at me like I was something so precious... You always seemed so happy and it made me happy too, and I wanted you to be happy... I still want you to be happy. Do you think we could be happy?”

Nori nodded, and then shook his head.

“Prison,” he explained, knocking against the stone wall to which his chain was attached. “Mama, too.”

“Oh, mama can go suck a troll,” Ori grumbled. “I'm an adult now. She can't tell me who I have a right to love. And I love _you_.”

“Still the prison,” Nori protested, but something was changing.

Five minutes earlier, the wall and the chain, the bars and the guards had been absolute proof that he would never again see the sun. Five minutes earlier, he'd had no reason to even want to see the sun again.

But that was five minutes earlier.

What he saw now was chains with a lock that could be picked (Drein had taught him how to do it, so many years ago, and he'd improved on that knowledge when it had meant the difference between life and starvation). He saw guards that could be corrupted, or robbed. He'd picked more difficult pockets, once.

“I'll get you out,” Ori promised. “There's... they say Thorin Oakenshield is preparing something. He wants to go to Erebor, they say. And your friend... Bombur, that's it? He said that you were great at working in a caravan, at doing all the odd jobs, that you had a reputation, and... it was just poaching. You'd get an official pardon, and Erebor, it could be...”

“New life.”

Ori nodded, smiling shyly.

Nori wasn't sure he liked the idea of it... but it was worth a try. He'd become honest for Ori's sake, all these years ago. He could follow a mad king on a mad quest for the same reason. Ori, after all, was worth a few sacrifices.

 

Thorin Oakenshield welcomed Nori in his company.

Enthusiastically.

Because good as he was, it wasn't just Nori coming. It was Bombur and Bofur and Bifur too, who explained that they weren't about to leave him behind, not when he needed them. He was part of the family, wasn't he?

It was also Ori and Dori, and if the king didn't seem too impressed when he first saw them, he became extremely polite once they told their names.

Dori's strength was legendary, as was his temper, and it was known that Ori, while more evenly tempered, could be as terrifying when he felt like it.

“And you are here because you're master Nori's family then,” Thorin noted. “You are his...”

“ _Cousins_ ,” Dori stated. “Well, I am his cousin. Ori is a little _more_ than that, of course... and the boy wasn't about to let his One go on such a dangerous trip all alone. We're not that sort of people.”

The word cousins rang to Nori's ears like a melody. It was simple and easy and the perfect way to start a new life in Erebor, should they survive. Kissing cousins were better than kissing brothers. With just one word, Dori had changed their lives.

And like this, with Ori's hand in his, with Dori and Bombur starting to chat as soon as Thorin had left, Nori felt at peace for the first time in years.

He was with his family, at last.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what the fuck happened with that fic  
> This isn't what I was trying to write  
> I don't know what happened here  
> I think I'm sorry though?


End file.
